Book Reviews,  Graphic Novel/Graphic Non-Fiction,  Memoir/Biography,  NON FICTION,  Prize Winner

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel *** (of 4)

http://thegood.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/7-fun-home-alison-bechdel-9.jpgA coming of age memoir of a girl discovering her lesbianism at the same moment she is learning that her obsessive-compulisive, tyrannical father was a closeted homosexual.  They story line sounds like a novel in part because Bechdel sees her childhood through the lens of fictional analysis.  That left me disconcerted to be reading a graphic novel with references to Proust, Joyce, the Odyssey, Greek mythology, Henry James, Collette, and so on.  To the extent I could follow the literary references I was moved by the author’s transparent, often painful, honesty about her life.  The book triumphs as a graphic novel precisely because it combines the genres of high literature with a comic book.